


Soldier, Avenger, King

by TheWriterEs



Series: Abandoned [1]
Category: Arthurian Mythology, Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Merlin (TV), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Reincarnation, Steve Rogers is Arthur Pendragon, could be read as slash, merlin misses his bro, minor use of OCs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-14 14:07:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29297118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheWriterEs/pseuds/TheWriterEs
Summary: Or, the five times someone tried to tell Steve Rogers that he’s King Arthur, and the one time he believed it
Relationships: Merlin & Arthur Pendragon (Merlin)
Series: Abandoned [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2151693
Comments: 2
Kudos: 31





	Soldier, Avenger, King

**Author's Note:**

> Just a Drabble that I did while I was supposed to be working on my main writing projects. Most likely won’t be continued

1.

Edith Drake annoyed the heck out of Steve. From the way she always seemed to hang around when he was with Bucky to the way she stared at him like she was reading his mind. She was… creepy. 

But his mother did not raise him to be rude, so Steve tolerated it. To an extent.

The night after Bucky left - before Steve became an experiment - Edith came to his house, drunker than he’d ever seen her and certainly more than any woman should be while out alone and in public. 

“What are you doing here?” Steve hissed pulling her inside. 

“Dunno. Thought maybe I finally found him so maybe m’dad would come back,” the girl's words slurred slightly, the barest hint of an accent pushing through. “But I screwed it up, like always, and…” she slumped against him, and Steve struggled to drag her onto the couch.

As he turned out the light and left her to sleep off her inebriated state, he almost swore he heard her mumble after him, “sorry, Arthur.”

* * *

2.

Steve Rogers was Captain America. He had, by this point, come to terms with many, _many,_ things in the last few years of his life. These things were included:

  1. Becoming a super soldier
  2. Rescuing his friend and then seeing said friend die
  3. Crashing his plane
  4. Leaving the love of his life
  5. Waking up in the future
  6. Assembling a team of superheroes



So yeah, you could say he was used to weird things happening. This, however… this was completely out of left field. 

Sigyn - the apparent sister-in-law of Thor, making her Loki’s _wife_ \- had taken him aside as he went to look into what Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D. really wanted to scepter for. At first he thought it would be a request about her husband. She hadn’t joined Natasha’s interrogation, and he expected she wanted to see him alone. 

Nope. 

“Steven,” she began softly, her wide blue eyes boring into him, “what do you know about me?” At Steve’s confused look, she continued, “From myths and legends, of course.”

Steve flushed slightly. 

“Not much, ma’am.” He admitted. “Norse religious studies weren’t exactly a hobby of mine.” Sigyn nodded softly, her eyes drifting in thought.”

“Yes, I thought that might be so. Well,” her gaze snapped back to him as she straightened herself. “Would your knowledge of Arthurian legends be any greater?”

He rattled off the very basic facts he was aware of (sword in the stone, Camelot, Merlin, King Arthur and the knights of the round table) and she shrugged. 

“Good enough. Steven,” she fixed him with a serious stare, “You are the reincarnation of King Arthur.”

Steve blinked at her in surprise. He looked over his shoulder, maybe expecting to see someone shouting out “We got you!” and then they’d all share a laugh about how silly this was.

“We’ve suspected it for some time, you may remember meeting my sister briefly before you thrust yourself into the war.” Sigyn was still talking. She obviously didn’t know _he_ knew it was a joke. 

“Your sister? I, well, don’t think I could have, ma’am. I didn’t have much to do with all _this_ ,” he waved his hand lazily around the helicarrier hall, “until very recently.”

Sigyn smiled patiently. 

“Although I am, for all the matters it counts, immortal, I am not from Asgard. I was born in what is now called Britain.For a time, we called it Albion. History still remembers my old home, as Camelot.” She looked at him expectantly. 

“Okay.” He might as well see where she was going with this. 

She sighed. 

“You don’t believe me, do you?”

With a politie smile plastered on his face - she was _not_ good at pranks but she was a lady - he shook his head. 

“No. I’m sorry.”

Sigyn sighed again, before giving his arm a pat and walking away.

* * *

3.

“So,” Fury tipped his chair back as he watched Steve with a thoughtful expression, his one eye gleaming. “A… contact of mine gave me some interesting news.”

“What contact?” Is the first thing out of Steve’s mind because _darn_ it he was done being spied on! If it was Sharron again, he was going to be so pissed. 

Fury gave him a look that said _I’m a lead of a super secret organization I’m not telling you my contact._ Which was… okay, yeah, that was fair. 

“What’s the news?” Steve said, grudgingly moving past it although he really didn’t like not knowing. 

“That you’re some reincarnation of a king.” Steve groaned, leaning forward on the desk to bury his face in his arms. Fury seemed amused. “I take it, this has been said before.”

“Sigyn,” Steve explained. “She was playing a prank on me when she accompanied Thor to Earth. Some kind of Asguardian joke where she claimed I was the reincarnation of her friend, King Arthur.” 

He knew it was a joke, for certain this time. He’d gone home and searched for myths and legends from both the Norse and Arthurian canon, and found _nothing_ relating the two. Sigyn had to have thought he’d believe her since she literally _asked_ if he’d known anything about either.

“A joke?”

Steve nodded and Fury sent him off as he reached for his phone and began dialing. He was gone before he could hear the conversation.

* * *

4.

When Steve had been young - very young, so young that war had seemed like a fantastical adventure from stories rather than the haunting experiences he’d come to know - he had dreamed of castles. His mother hadn’t really thought anything of it, because most little boys dreamed of being knights, or kings, or soldiers, or president. She had let him enjoy his little fantasies.

And as he grew up, Steve dreamed less and less of such things. Sometimes, however, he would spend night after night dreaming about them before they disappeared again. When he had his first kiss, he dreamed of a beautiful woman who always seemed to be surrounded by flowers in her dress, her hair, her _smell_. 

He wondered if they were trying to tell him something once, like the stories his mother told him from the worn Bible she’d brought with her to America, but in the end he chalked it all up to an overactive imagination, like everyone else thought about him.

Tonight, Sigyn had appeared in his dreams, although she seemed to be even younger than she’d appeared on the helicarrier. The dream had been soundless, but the young goddess appeared to be yelling at him about something or possibly someone. At one point he thought he could see a familiar man standing beside him. The dream shifted until he found himself alone, standing aside a lake in a forest clearing. Two dark haired women, one dressed in red and the other in blue, stood with their backs to him in the center of the lake. When Steve attempted to reach them in the supposedly shallow water, he drowned.

He woke up, face to face with an alarm clock proudly proclaiming the time as 4:30.

He left his bed and decided to make himself some coffee before going for his morning run.

* * *

5.

Steve assumed most of those he’d known back in the 40’s were long dead and gone, although he _had_ been proven to be correct before. Peggy… she was still hanging on, although it hurt him to see her old and confused. Bucky, too, was startlingly still alive. Hopefully now he could be free of Hydra. 

So when he received a letter from Edith Drake, requesting to speak with him, he pictured a tiny old lady using a walker or cane when he opened the door. Instead, a young woman stood before him, her hazel eyes and curly dark-brown hair the exact same as they’d been when he last saw her in ‘43. She was dressed like a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, although he couldn’t recognize the marking that replaced the S.H.I.E.L.D. insignia and she had no visible weapons on her person. She smiled gently at him. 

“Hi, Steve.”

“You aren’t a secret Hydra assassin too, are you?” He asked her wryly. He may not have been particularly _fond_ of her, all those years ago, but she was the first person he’d seen that still seemed, well, the same. 

She laughed gently in return. 

“No, I’m not.” A frown pulled at her features, and he watched the lines that formed on her brow and around her eyes. “I’m… I have a confession.”

“If it’s your anti-aging skin care routine, please share it. You’d make a fortune.”

Edith winced. 

“I don’t particularly recommend being cursed by an angry Sidhe.” Edith's tone was dry as she bluntly ignored Steve’s shock expression. “I was twenty three when I was cursed over fifteen hundred years ago… I’m exactly the same age now, because I’m always going to be twenty three. And you, well, I suspected that you were someone I was once very close with.”

Oh no. No, he knew where she was going with this!

“Edith,” he interrupted her sternly. “I just got home from the hospital; I think I’m still concussed. Maybe come back another time.” She blinked in surprise before shaking her head. 

“I can’t do that. With Hydra rearing their heads once more, the world needs you. Steve, it’s you. You’re King Arthur.” He took a step forward to close the door, but she stopped, her hand held in front of her and her eyes glowing gold. She had not spoken, and did not touch the door.

“Oh,” Steve said faintly. He felt very light-headed, all of the sudden. “I - should... “ he pointed stiffly at his couch. “You can… sit?”

He really hoped that S.H.I.E.L.D. knew a crazy witch was attacking him, because he really didn’t feel like dealing with this _at all_ after literally just uncovering a Nazi group in their supposedly ‘good’ secret organization. Sometimes… he really envied those that could just live their normal lives.

Edith marched past him and sat primly on the squashy sofa as Steve continued to stare at her with the door open. She rolled her eyes and with a wave of her had, closed the door while Steve found himself sitting next to her. He blinked rapidly, wondering if he was going to wake up.

“I know this is hard,” _Understatement_ . “But you have to understand… you were predestined to be born again, to help Albion in its greatest time of need. With everything that’s happened in just the last few decades _alone_ , well,” Edith bit her lip and looked away for a moment, her eyes sad. She looked at him again with only determination showing on her face. “I believe that time will be very soon, and you need to _remember._ ”

Steve grit his teeth. Maybe… maybe part of this was true. Maybe Edith _was_ a witch who had, at one point in her life, known King Arthur. But he was _not_ the king. He was just a kid from Brooklyn, after all. His mind jumped back to the words that Stark had said to him when they first met. _All that’s special about you came from a bottle_. 

A knock at the door caused both of them to jump. Edith bit her lip and stood.

“I’ve brought someone, who I think might… might make this all a little easier.” She strode across the room and opened the door, and Steve watched with a furrowed brow as an old man with a cane - and Sigyn, for some reason - entered the room.

“Thank you, for bringing him,” he heard Edith say softly to Sigyn, but the goddess’s reply was lost as the old man fixed Steve with a stare.

_“Arthur!”_

* * *

+1.

The moment the words left the old man’s lips, his appearance began to change. His wrinkles smoothed out over his face and hands, while the age spots started to lighten. His long hair and beard began to darken while both retreated backwards. Once it had stopped, they were faced with a tall, skinny man who was hardly more than a boy. His dark hair was cut short, and his ears stuck out from underneath the raven locks. The now-young man grinned at Steve, his blue eyes bright and his smile so wide and joyful and 

then

it

clicked

Steve - Arthur - pitched forward into his sorcerer's arms, gripping him tightly as he buried his face into his shoulder, breathing in a smell that was so familiar and so wonderfully _Merlin_. 

As Arthur Pendragon, Once and Future King of Camelot and Albion, he most _certainly did not_ cry. 

But Steve Rogers, Captain America and tired Avenger, he sobbed. He’d learned, over so many years as a soldier and Avenger and now whatever he was, whoever he was, that crying was nothing to care about, at least not with those that mattered. 

“ _Merlin_ ,” His voice was muffled by the scarf Merlin wore in place of his neckerchief.

“ _Arthur,”_ Merlin repeated in response. His own tears had left a trail down his face, and his voice sounded choked. “You finally came _back_.”

It was funny, if a little eerie, just how much he sounded like Peggy when he said that. He supposed that Merlin was pretty old, by now, if he had been alive this whole time instead of reincarnating like Arthur - Steve? - had. He pulled away, and rubbed his face with his hands. 

“I,” he started, not knowing what to say. His memories had come rushing back to him, all at once, the moment he’d seen his sorcerer’s face, looking exactly like he had the day that they’d first met, all those years ago in Camelot. It was not long after that, he thought with a smile, that they’d been forced to spend time together when Merlin became his servant. He swallowed a lump in his throat. “I’m sorry it took me so long.”

Merlin held him a little tighter.


End file.
